Greedy Little Eyes (12 page)

“Mitzi?” Her voice cracked. She sounded fragile, uncertain.

I closed my eyes, spinning the chains overhead to knots.

“Will you let me talk to you just for a minute?”

She stuffed the Kleenex into her pocket, then rubbed her fingertips at her forehead the way my father used to when they fought.

Finally she said, “I must’ve started a hundred different letters but I didn’t know what to say. I just—”

I let the swing unspin from its tangle and then caught the earth with my feet, dizzy, the ground breathing under me.

“Hey, I, uh, I enrolled in university while I was away, you know. Through correspondence. I’ll have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree soon.”

I didn’t speak.

“Are you okay? Is everything okay for you?”

I opened my eyes at the ground.

“How about Nancy? Do you still see her?”

“Nancy can go to hell,” I said matter-of-factly, the way you might give someone a weather forecast.

She was quiet a moment. “You’ve gotten so old in two years.” She looked away. “A day hasn’t gone by where I didn’t—I just thought I should tell you that I’m going to be in the phone book. Under ‘Donner.’ For when you’re ready. I thought you should know.”

Tipping my head back to look at the sky, I took in all the air I could swallow and still felt as if I might suffocate. I saw the hem of her coat out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head and got off the swing, walked across the football field and through the opening in the chain-link fence.

I walked across town instead of taking the bus, walked up and down the streets in our neighbourhood, until
long past dark. It was after eleven when I wandered up our driveway.

My father sat in his car staring straight ahead with the windows down, no motor running. His elbow balanced on the bottom of the window frame, fingertips touching the top as though a Sunday breeze were playing at them. A street light shone through the rear window, illuminating a dry cleaning bag, its wispy plastic glistening over pairs of dark boxy shoulders.

I headed for the house, slowing to touch his shirt sleeve as I passed.

Clown Lessons

T
HE BANK HAD CALLED EACH DAY
to find out when I’d be in again, offering up “casual Friday” as some sort of carrot—as though the lure of staying in my sweats might just bring my fever down. The third time the assistant manager phoned I clung to my blanket and apologized for the spot I’d put him in, promising I’d let him know if I was well enough to come in the next morning.

James yanked a suspender back onto his shoulder and pulled off his spongy red nose. Grabbing the receiver out of my hand, he said, “Who’s this? Gerald? Listen, Gerald, you try and get my sister out of her sickbed before she’s ready and I swear to Christ, I’ll come down there, rip your head off and stuff it back up your ass!” He slammed the phone back in its cradle.

Sitting forward on the couch, I rested my head in my hands. “Thanks, James. Now I have to apologize for you,
too.” I could feel flu tears swell with heat and pain and inflated emotion. I reached for the receiver.

“No. Clarisse, just relax. It’s about time they figured out how valuable you are. They pay you dog shit. They’re using you. You’re not going back unless you get a raise. You can help me instead.”

I raised my knees and dropped my forehead against them. It felt like it might sway and roll off under the couch, given a chance.

“Come on,” he said, “help me with my makeup. I can’t get the lines straight, my hands are shaking.”

I shut my eyelids tight. “I can hardly sit up, never mind do your makeup. It’s not my fault you got pissed out of your tree last night—go take that hangover remedy you claim is so brilliant.”

“We don’t have any eggs.”

He sat down on the couch beside me, took the black felt pen from the bib pocket of his polka-dotted overalls.

“James. Don’t make me do this.”

“Come on, it’ll only take a sec.” He picked up his template mask from the coffee table.

“All right. But you’re doing the greasepaint yourself.”

He kissed my hot cheek and, with hangover-hands, held the mask firmly against his features. I leaned in and carefully traced black around the outside, setting his face in relief. The symmetrical cut-outs allowed me to outline what would soon be rosy round cheeks, enormous eyes of cartoon blue and a giant red mouth: The face of Bulbous the Clown.

Oh, and the tear. Mustn’t forget the tear.

By dinnertime, my fever was down and I was starting to feel as if I might live. I had called Gerald back to say it would likely be best for the other employees if I stayed home until Monday and to apologize on my brother’s behalf, explaining that James wasn’t feeling well himself.

“Yes,” Gerald said, with the smug courage afforded him by my brother’s absence, “the twenty-six-ounce flu, I’m sure.”

Gerald and James did not get on well. They had had one or two classes together before James decided university was for sheep and shmucks and dropped out. He now referred to Gerald as a pencil-pushing little yutz. Gerald, having seen James tossed out of bars more than once (including an occasion when James had taken hold of Gerald’s wife’s breast, much to her surprise but seemingly not to her displeasure), had all the ammunition he needed. My brother embarrassed me and everybody knew it.

A little after six, James stormed in, cussing and slamming the door, dropping his hockey bags, flailing at balloons, both flaccid and blown up, as he kicked his giant yellow clown shoes off his feet and down the hall.

I blew my nose. “You don’t drive in those things, do you?”

“No, I don’t drive in them for chrissake. How the hell could I drive in them? I couldn’t carry them from the car
so I wore them into the house, that’s all.” He was tangled up in gloves and balloons and suspender straps. He yanked off his blue fuzzy wig and flopped to the floor, rolling and kicking, dragging himself free of his costume like some pale and terrible sea creature extricating itself from the shell. “Fuck!” he bellowed. “This city is such bullshit!”

“Can you not yell at me.”

“You have no idea what it’s like out there in the real world, outside of that pastel palace you work in where they steal people’s money and it’s all perfectly legal. I make people happy! But that’s
il
legal.” He stalked into the living room in his boxers and T-shirt and dropped into the armchair.

I looked at him.

“What?” he snapped.

I blew my nose and faced the TV. The news was on. Turning the channel, I searched for something with a laugh track.

James shoved his back into the chair. “All right, I’m sorry. But all you had to do today was be sick and watch
Oprah
while I was out trying to make a living, trying to be fun and playful, and the bastards told me today my permit was turned down. The type of permit I need doesn’t even
exist
any more. Bulbous the Clown is no longer
welcome
in Stanley Park.”

“How come?”

“They say I’m not a busker because I’m not really an entertainer. I don’t have a show; making balloon animals is not entertaining, it’s
vending
.”

“Well, that’s sort of true, isn’t it? You sell balloons.”

“Screw you, Clarisse. This is so typical—I’ve never gotten any support from you in
any
of my endeavours.”

“Except for financial,” I croaked through phlegm, “and emotional, and—”

“Well, stop sounding like a goddamn bureaucrat.”

I went back to flipping channels. “I thought they told you ages ago they wouldn’t renew your permit.”

“I assumed it was just a formality. I’ve been at that zoo for five years. The guy from the parks board or the aquarium or whatever the hell told me today I was supposed to be out of there last week, to pack my shit and go. Can you believe that? Those goddamn kids love me!”

“Couldn’t you get a vending permit?”

“No! They only want parks board
popcorn
vendors. What’s left for those kids? They got rid of the pony rides, they got rid of Squirrelman, the jugglers. It’s nothin’ but a whale jail now.”

“What about the kids’ parties? You make better money at those anyway, don’t you?”

He glared at the bright yellow socks bagging around his ankles. “I hate those parties. Always some shit-assed brat sitting on my shoes, yankin’ on my balls. The mothers are always bitches. Except for that one.” He laughed. “And one of her friends.”

That one
was a pretty young weather girl from a local station who had hired James for her son’s fifth birthday. Midway through the celebration, James pulled her into a closet. Apparently she nearly had herself into his big clown pants when one of the kids found some matches
and started a fire; her husband came home early and the closet door jammed. Despite a big song and dance about a balloon surprise that needed a two-person set-up, James got punted down the steps. He did get gigs from three of the weather girl’s friends though.

“Anyways,” James said, “I got a plan. I called up a bunch of newspapers and TV stations and this buddy of mine who works Queen Elizabeth Park as GoGo the Clown. We’re gonna go out tonight, toss back a couple and iron out the details, but man I got somethin’ good cooked up. They can’t kill me off when
they
say.
I’ll
say when I die, and tomorrow’s my goddamn funeral in the park. There’ll be an outpouring of emotion like y’never
seen
!” He jumped up and headed for the stairs.

“Hey, can you take your junk with you, please?”

He paused over his hockey bags and clown suit heaped at the front door, then started toward the stairs again, until I added, “And the hydro bill—I need your half today.”

“Can’t do it. They really hooped me this afternoon.” He came back and heaved the hockey bags over his shoulders, wincing dramatically under the weight.

“James, I can’t carry you this month. We just got our third warning and they’re going to cut us off. I need a hundred and fifty.”

“I told you, you should get a raise. Or a different job.”

I glared at him.

“Okay, I’ll pay it. Give me the address and I’ll drop it off.”

“Sure. You give me the cash or we’ll be eating cold spaghetti from a can tomorrow.”

“Jeez, you can be a tight-ass. They’re not going to cut off our hydro.” He groaned, dropped his bags and rummaged in his overalls, scooping a handful of two-dollar coins before he tossed me a cloth sack with the rest. “There should be around a hundred-fifty bucks there. A hundred anyway.”

The next morning, Gerald called to see how I was. Part of me felt guilty. I was about ready to get out of my pyjamas, and well enough that I could imagine being back at work. But I was still a little dizzy and I sneezed onto the mouthpiece. Gerald said he’d better let me go. Once he’d hung up, I searched under the kitchen sink for the Lysol spray, misting the receiver and wiping it down.

An alarm clock went off upstairs. I tried to remember the last time James had set his alarm—for a morning wake-up, that is. He’d happily set it for midnight so he wouldn’t miss a party, but 10 a.m.? It was against everything he stood for.

Half an hour later, I heard him crashing down the stairs, hockey bags banging into the walls. His face wasn’t made up and he wasn’t in his gear yet. “I’m going over to my buddy’s to get ready. Watch the news today! Bulbous the Clown’s gonna rock this town, baby!”

As he left he slammed the door behind him.

July had been cool and rainy, but the day warmed up and in the afternoon I sat on the back porch reading.
It was the first I’d been out in three days, other than to mail a cheque for the hydro bill, which wasn’t actually due until the following week. There had been a hundred and seven dollars in James’s pouch, which, after the hydro, left just enough to cover his share of the phone bill.

Shortly after four, I heard the doorbell and leaned around the back of my lawn lounger to look through the house. The bell rang again. Likely a Jehovah’s Witness. Or kids. Or someone wanting a donation—maybe for cancer, I thought. With a twinge of guilt, I hoisted myself up, grabbing my wallet on the way. By the time I got to the front door, the porch was empty. I wandered through the kitchen back to the porch and noticed someone in the yard: an old man, small and curved, in a rumpled suit. I stood at the top of the stairs and watched him move around the yard, bending to look at small purple flowers whose names I’d never learned, running his hand across the heads of the tallest snapdragons.